I am puzzled--nay, not puzzled, but amused, or something close to it that mixes a grim resignation to laugh in the face of folly during our long march to the broad sunlit uplands with a desire to point out that I was right all along even though the point is now well past where that matters--anyway, I have gratefully noticed that two of the more annoying aphorisms of the past decade have entirely disappeared now, even though they're arguably more appropriate now than they ever were during the Bush administration.
See if you can place these in their proper context (cough, stimulus bill) but also recall the last time you heard a gleeful donkey utter them falsely about, oh, Iraq:
1. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.
2. The first rule of being in a hole is, stop digging.
Both of these dull ersatz witticisms were like having sand in your knickers--a dull, inescapably annoying presence which by all rights should disappear but doesn't. They basically offer as a substitute for actual argument, and are usually presented with a tiresome and entirely unearned sense of smug self-satisfaction. But these nonetheless were common phrases but a few months ago.
As we begin a, shall we say, experimental hair of the dog approach to combating the deleterious effects of the bursting of our recent credit bubble by spending everyone else's money in what will likely prove a vain attempt to re-inflate it, I surprisingly haven't heard Helen Thomas or Andrea Mitchell utter these aphoristic droplets of the wisdom of the gods; nor have I heard them lob up softball questions to an interviewee in a predictable attempt to elicit such remarks.
Has anyone else noticed this?
On balance I'd rather have the annoying folk wisdom but also a president who was bankrupting the country through more incompetence than malice than the reverse situation, which is pretty much what we have now. But, there you have it: I have identified a positive effect of the reign of Dear Leader! And you thought I couldn't do it.
See if you can place these in their proper context (cough, stimulus bill) but also recall the last time you heard a gleeful donkey utter them falsely about, oh, Iraq:
1. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.
2. The first rule of being in a hole is, stop digging.
Both of these dull ersatz witticisms were like having sand in your knickers--a dull, inescapably annoying presence which by all rights should disappear but doesn't. They basically offer as a substitute for actual argument, and are usually presented with a tiresome and entirely unearned sense of smug self-satisfaction. But these nonetheless were common phrases but a few months ago.
As we begin a, shall we say, experimental hair of the dog approach to combating the deleterious effects of the bursting of our recent credit bubble by spending everyone else's money in what will likely prove a vain attempt to re-inflate it, I surprisingly haven't heard Helen Thomas or Andrea Mitchell utter these aphoristic droplets of the wisdom of the gods; nor have I heard them lob up softball questions to an interviewee in a predictable attempt to elicit such remarks.
Has anyone else noticed this?
On balance I'd rather have the annoying folk wisdom but also a president who was bankrupting the country through more incompetence than malice than the reverse situation, which is pretty much what we have now. But, there you have it: I have identified a positive effect of the reign of Dear Leader! And you thought I couldn't do it.
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